Starta ICO in $5 million sell out

Starta’s crowdsale has hit its funding goal in less than 24 hours — passing its first milestone in less than a quarter of an hour.

Starta ICO launched on 4 July, offering investors the opportunity to back a collection of early-stage start-ups that have participated in the Starta Accelerator.

Starta Accelerator takes promising tech companies from Russia and Eastern Europe and prepares them for entry into the US market, where they will attract customers, expand and gain the interest of new investors. When the companies are bought — an ‘exit’ in venture capital terminology — it is typically for a multiple of 10–20x their original valuation when they were first funded.

These opportunities, whilst lucrative, are hard to access in the traditional financial system by anyone without large amounts of money and special connections. Starta’s ICO, which was run by the Singapore-based Cross Coin, aimed to make VC accessible to any investors, regardless of how much money they have. Five million Starta tokens were sold for $1 each.

A remarkable $1.5 million — the ‘minimum viable’ amount — was raised during the first 15 minutes of the crowdfunding campaign, and the full amount of $5 million was raised in less than a day. The breakdown of funds raised was as follows:

909 BTC
4,168 LTC
203,422 WAVES
5,200 ETH
5,793 ETC

The first $1.5 million was earmarked to fund the 21 companies that are currently going through the Starta Accelerator. The additional $3.5 million will be used to fund a further series of companies, bringing the total to between 60 and 70.